Linux Can Boot On Apple's M1 Pro But More Work Remains

[Guest]

And lose your freedom this way? No thank you.

Anyone with a M1 Macbook likely isn't concerned with this. Freedom-seekers have old Lenovos with Coreboot

[cronius]

Given the passions surrounding this topic, admitting this might be considered suicide but ...

I love everything Linux. I use Slackware on my production servers. Almost every year I build a Linux From Scratch system by hand, play with Odroids when I get time, et cetera.

However, I have used a MacBook Pro for the last 5 years as my daily driver for one very simple reason - productivity. I do not have to tinker with much - open lid (I shutdown the machine like once every two months ), login, ssh to remote boxes, type documents, read emails, use browser, VLC once in a while.

MacOS - It works - no need to worry about wayland, or what window did not do what, bootloader issues, power management stuff, package dependencies - some of the main plagues on Linux systems and the myriad of incomplete DE implementations. When I make time to game, I fire up the Xbox or PS4 - no need to curse out Nvidia or AMD for poor drivers.

That said, if I can get Slackware (with XFCE) running on my MBP, then all would be well with the world!

Thumbs up and beers all round to all the devs working on getting Linux up and running on great hardware (I admit this grudgingly - Apple has done good work on their hardware)

Like others have mentioned, I suggest trying a "retail" linux distro like Fedora, Ubuntu, Pop! OS, or similar. It might not have the hacker feel of slackware or linux from scratch, but on the plus side it does not have the hacker feel of slackware or linux from scratch. What you're mentioning sounds like software issues; your distro should take care of that for you.

[Michael_S]

Given the passions surrounding this topic, admitting this might be considered suicide but ...

I love everything Linux. I use Slackware on my production servers. Almost every year I build a Linux From Scratch system by hand, play with Odroids when I get time, et cetera.

However, I have used a MacBook Pro for the last 5 years as my daily driver for one very simple reason - productivity. I do not have to tinker with much - open lid (I shutdown the machine like once every two months ), login, ssh to remote boxes, type documents, read emails, use browser, VLC once in a while.

MacOS - It works - no need to worry about wayland, or what window did not do what, bootloader issues, power management stuff, package dependencies - some of the main plagues on Linux systems and the myriad of incomplete DE implementations. When I make time to game, I fire up the Xbox or PS4 - no need to curse out Nvidia or AMD for poor drivers.

That said, if I can get Slackware (with XFCE) running on my MBP, then all would be well with the world!

Thumbs up and beers all round to all the devs working on getting Linux up and running on great hardware (I admit this grudgingly - Apple has done good work on their hardware)

I know everyone is dogpiling you, and I'm sorry for that.

I've been using Linux as my daily driver for more than five years - either Ubuntu MATE on my desktop or Elementary Linux on my laptop. I don't dual boot, these are the only operating systems I have on my computers.

On my desktop, the only issue I have is that Firefox audio stops working periodically after a few days. That's all. Linux always boots, it never hangs, apps don't crash, I don't have to fiddle with anything. Audio works flawlessly on Chromium and related browsers, the audio issues are unique to Firefox. If I wasn't stubborn about using Firefox, I would have no issues. My Steam games all run fine.

On my laptop, battery life is bad and even though the builtin wireless is officially supported I can't get it to work. So I usually use it plugged in and with an external USB wifi adapter. Yes, that's a hassle - but it's an 8 year old laptop (it was high end when new, so it's still adequately fast) and I have no incentive to upgrade.

EDIT: I will say that five years ago, I was trying to ride the bleeding edge of Wine, Mesa, and graphics drivers to get the best gaming experience. That was a headache, and I occasionally wrecked things badly enough that I needed a USB boot drive to fix it, or even a fresh reinstall. But if you stick with the default installs in your Ubuntu / Ubuntu flavor / Fedora / OpenSUSE / Debian installation, none of those issues arise and they've been more than adequate for gaming for years.

[Paradigm Shifter]

To be fair to "...but more work remains"...

Isn't that always the case? Not just for Linux (although Linux, being what it is, suffers the most visibly from this) but for Windows and MacOS as well? I'm still waiting for Microsoft to add tabs to Windows File Explorer, for example, something they have been equivocating over since some of the Windows 8 pre-release builds! At this point I think tabbed Explorer will come when the desktop just becomes some Javascript running in Edge.

It's just that some items on the "To Do" list are (relatively) simple or "low hanging fruit" while others (M1/Pro/Max GPU) are big ticket items which when they're sorted will be the talk of the town (even if it's a small town).

[Viki Ai]

Given the passions surrounding this topic, admitting this might be considered suicide but ...

I love everything Linux. I use Slackware on my production servers. Almost every year I build a Linux From Scratch system by hand, play with Odroids when I get time, et cetera.

However, I have used a MacBook Pro for the last 5 years as my daily driver for one very simple reason - productivity. I do not have to tinker with much - open lid (I shutdown the machine like once every two months ), login, ssh to remote boxes, type documents, read emails, use browser, VLC once in a while.

MacOS - It works - no need to worry about wayland, or what window did not do what, bootloader issues, power management stuff, package dependencies - some of the main plagues on Linux systems and the myriad of incomplete DE implementations. When I make time to game, I fire up the Xbox or PS4 - no need to curse out Nvidia or AMD for poor drivers.

That said, if I can get Slackware (with XFCE) running on my MBP, then all would be well with the world!

Thumbs up and beers all round to all the devs working on getting Linux up and running on great hardware (I admit this grudgingly - Apple has done good work on their hardware)

Oh, I'm not claiming any of the myriad UI options available on the Linux userspace are actually good (some are occasionally tolerable enough, but which one(s) that will be tends to vary year-by-year!). But if I have to suffer with a shitty ill-considered UI cobbled together from 40 years of conflicting and oft-out-of-date UI 'expertise' by designers I wouldn't trust with a community flyer... I will at least suffer with one(s) that I didn't have to pay good money for the 'privilege' of suffering with! (I use Win10 and sundry gawdawrful-webUI-disasters at work because they pay me to suffer those ones, which is fair exchange!).

[RomuloP]

If you think every Linux desktop user has to go through all of those issues... It seems like you haven't actually used Linux on a desktop in ten years. And it has come a long way. You should give it a shot.

This is absolutely true, specially for commoditie hardware and devices with some focus on Linux OR mass market like some Thinkpads and System76, etc, but this is not true for cutting edge, fancy hardware market. What sucks is that here is not a very clear and easy to pick and price competitive catalog for Linux.

[tuxd3v]

Anyone with a M1 Macbook likely isn't concerned with this. Freedom-seekers have old Lenovos with Coreboot

don't forget down the road that... yeah some NSA guys are contributing to Coreboot..